THIRTY-NINE

The ship was deep into subspace, zipping soundlessly through the nether regions that couldn’t really be seen as much as felt. All that emptiness had a kind of weight, at least psychologically.

Jo wandered to the infirmary. Wink stood just inside the entrance. There was but one of the medical suites occupied: Gunny, in an induced healing-trance, unconscious and scheduled to remain so for a week, as the machines pumped and shunted and applied their various chems and nanos and whatnot toward repairing her wounds. She would recover fully, Wink had told everybody, though it would be a while before her arm and shoulder were back to normal.

Sitting just inside the medical suite in a chair, leaning against the wall and asleep, was Gramps.

“He needs to get some rest,” Jo said.

Wink looked at where Gramps sat. “Good luck getting him to leave.”

“But she’s not in any danger.”

“Nope. But when she wakes up, he’s bound and determined she won’t do it without him there to razz her about getting shot.”

Jo shook her head. “That’s why he says he’s doing it?”

“Yeah, he’d cut out his tongue before he admitted the real reason. If that was him in the bed? Bet your ass she’d be sitting in the chair waiting for him to wake up.” He shook his head.

Jo smiled. “Love is grand.”

“So it seems. Not that I would know.”

“Never been in love, Wink?”

“Nope. Been in serious lust a time or sixty. Had a few partners I wouldn’t have minded if they stuck around. But hearts and flowers and like that? No.” He looked at her, saw something in her expression. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“Not nothing, I’m a trained medical man here, I know a look when I see one. What?”

“I was just thinking about a reason that might be.”

“Spill it.”

“Maybe that living on the razor’s edge keeps you from being open to that level of intimacy.”

“What do you mean?”

She regarded him. “Sheeit, Wink, what do you think? You might could have fooled the Army’s scyrers by skirting the issue, but you aren’t fooling anybody around here. That whole dance-with-death business? Doesn’t leave much space for a normal relationship. Too much chance of here-today-gone-in-a-heartbeat thinking.”

“Funny, coming from you.”

“You’re right about that. Military in general, and me specifically—I’m not the girl to be offering advice on the subject. I have my own shit to deal with. Somebody looking for something in me, there’s a wall they can’t get past. I put it there. That’s how I know another wall when I see one.”

Wink didn’t say anything for a moment. Then: “Ain’t we the pair? Doc the Adrenaline Junkie and Jo the Bulletproof Woman Warrior, running pell-mell parallel with the final curtain.”

She nodded. “Yep. What say we go have a drink? See what happens when we get drunk and start crying into our glasses?”

“Why don’t we skip the booze and go straight to my room and screw each other’s brains out instead?”

She smiled. “I thought you’d never ask.”